Women on Liberty in Early Modern England

Philosophy Compass 9 (2):112-122 (2014)
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Abstract

Our modern ideals about liberty were forged in the great political and philosophical debates of the 17th and 18th centuries, but we seldom hear about women's contributions to those debates. This paper examines the ideas of early modern English women – namely Margaret Cavendish, Mary Astell, Mary Overton, ‘Eugenia’, Sarah Chapone and the civil war women petitioners – with respect to the classic political concepts of negative, positive and republican liberty. The author suggests that these writers' woman-centred concerns provide a unique historical perspective on these much-discussed ideals of freedom from external interference, freedom as self-determination and freedom from domination.

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Jacqueline Broad
Monash University

Citations of this work

Astell, friendship, and relational autonomy.Allauren Samantha Forbes - 2020 - European Journal of Philosophy 29 (2):487-503.
Rethinking Early Modern Philosophy.Graham Clay & Ruth Boeker - 2023 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 31 (2):105-114.
New Perspectives on Agency in Early Modern Philosophy.Ruth Boeker - 2019 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 27 (5):625-630.

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References found in this work

Republicanism: a theory of freedom and government.Philip Pettit (ed.) - 1997 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Leviathan.Thomas Hobbes - 2007 - In Aloysius Martinich, Fritz Allhoff & Anand Vaidya (eds.), Early Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings with Commentary. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Autonomy, gender, politics.Marilyn Friedman - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Liberty before Liberalism.Quentin Skinner - 2001 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 63 (1):172-175.
Two Concepts of Liberty.Isaiah Berlin - 2002 - In Liberty. Oxford University Press.

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